Nuki News #35: Where I've Been (2014 - 2016)

Part 2 of the little series going over the last 10 years and my relationship with art! That means you should read part 1 if you haven’t, you can find that post over here:

Part 1: https://www.patreon.com/posts/43790388

So 2014 came around and I was then focusing on improving my skills and getting into the area of painting. I was always impressed by artists who could make things feel dimensional and have volume, so I followed a number of tutorials and did a number of painting studies to learn about value and form! I’d say this year just about had a lot of grayness to it; I decided to keep colors out of my studies so I could keep more focused on the shading aspect. My pokemon comic was still going strong during this time, and it was always nice to see the leaps of improvement of my art style from chapter to chapter in the later years. I was learning to have a more ‘professional’ approach to how I made the comic too, making official comic scripts and a comic producing work flow(like actually doing thumbnails and panel layouts for pages in advance, and working on pages in batches). I treated art making like a full time endeavor, though I was juggling college on the side.

I was leaning more n more into realism as I learned to paint, and tried to bring that into how I drew pokemon as well. At the time it just seemed like the ‘right’ thing to do; professional artists make everything look realistic, right? By late summer of that year though, I began to get bored of drawing humans. I was practicing one evening, a bit aimlessly(some figure drawing, some animal drawing) and then had a thought. What if I drew a human with a ferret head instead? And it seemed to turn out pretty fine, I thought. So I drew that a bit more, until I stopped and realized- “wait.... I can draw furries?!” Anthro animal characters seemed to be a mystery to me- I knew of furries, didn’t mind them either, though when I realized I could draw them, I figured there’d be no better time to make a FurAffinity account. Looking back at this incident, I kinda notice one of my issues with practicing so much art was I did it all so segmented and wasn’t connecting the dots actively. This kinda slowed me down in a way of finding my art voice, though, I don’t have regrets about how I learned art, since I got to where I am now, after all. But just something I’m more aware of now.

So, FurAffinity! At the time I didn’t consider myself a furry, just someone with a newfound ability to draw anthro animals, and FA seemed like the right place to post that kind of art there. I even made a fursona for myself- a Ferret! I hadn’t mentioned before in the last post, but I’d been known as ‘The Being’ back in my DeviantArt days, and named my FA after the same username. I chose that name at the time when I was 16 because I didn’t like labels, and didn’t want to be pinned down as one thing or another. So I chose the most generic thing to call myself- a ‘being’! The friends I made on dA took to calling me that, or even shorten it to ‘B’! But here, for my fursona, I wanted a new name. I went with ‘Artie’! Because I like doing art(like I’m Art-y), and if I could, I’d choose it to be my actual name. I then took to drawing various folks and friends to exercise my ability to draw anthros, and before long, it was 2015.

My Painting skills had gotten to a good spot, I was even getting commissions for them. I had also been working towards a new project, doing a graphic novel on the side of Pokemon Beta. This one was explicitly not-pokemon, something more original, though heavily inspired by Hotline Miami, as I really enjoyed that game when it released. I had the goal of just trying to make a story from start to finish, keep it relatively short, and potentially get book prints of. I was also experimenting with an art style, something more black and white. As well, I finally began exploring my kinks and fetishes, my interestings. Bellies, and merging, in fact. I also realized I wasn’t great with bigger body types, as most of the figure drawings I’d done were with much more fit/slim models. I was thrilled to find others who enjoyed what I did, things I was afraid were too weird or inappropriate. It’s the internet, after all, so there’s always going to be someone into something weirder than you are. But it’s still mighty comforting.

I do wanna briefly cover that Graphic novel again, because after a few months I managed to actually finish it! It was about 67 pages, too. But, I ended up hating it. The art was kind of crappy, I think, and these days I’m far too ashamed to show anyone it. Because I don’t think I was listening to myself very well. For one, I was drawing humans when they didn’t really interest me much. For two, it was a story I didn’t have too much personal emotional investment in(which at the time I felt I had to be a bit distanced from it so I don’t make it go on too long) As well, the tone of it definitely….well it’s just not what I wanted to create. It was a strong case of learning the difference of liking something but finding it doesn’t suit me. I can like or enjoy stories that have a lot of violence and death in them. But for me, it isn’t what I personally would like to create. So it definitely wasn’t a waste of time- frankly a lot of improvement and finding yourself is learning what you DON’T want.

So 2016 arrived, and it was here I began to realize more and more furry art is more of my interest- I still spent a fair amount of time to not-furry art, but I got to a point where I ended up deleting my ‘non furry’ art Twitter account and stuck with the furry one! I’d gotten better with fat body types, and enjoyed making collaborative art with fellow furry friends in the community. There was a period in late May of 2016 though, where I’d gotten really depressed- and shut off my access to social media and messaging. During that time I was struggling with the fact I needed to find a way of getting a job after college was soon coming to an end- and a way of getting to move out of my parent’s home and live with my boyfriend, whom was on the opposite side of the country.

I got serious, and worked on making a design portfolio to try to find a graphic design job, since that’s what I went to college for. After about 12 days I returned to social media and messaging, at least more confident I could do something with my skills. I actually was fortunate to get a design internship at my college a month later, and subsequently would finish my degree just as I landed a real job- the one I currently have been working at the last 4 years. Sadly this job doesn’t utilize any of my creative skills necessarily(it’s more customer support than anything) but, I was over the moon that such a big problem that weighed on my mind actually ended up working out in the end. I had to be much more proactive and put myself out there, but it was more than worth it. After October of that year I didn’t manage to do too much else in the way of art, but I saw fit to move away from being a Ferret, and choose a new sona for this new chapter of my life. Fittingly, a tanuki, to match my boyfriend.

Gosh this kinda ended up being my longest Nukinews yet, oops! But hopefully it was interesting to read how I progressed. The last part will go over my years adapting to my job and how that impacted my art- thanks so much for your support this month and keeping along with me!